1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to enhanced illumination devices and more particularly to operating room lighting systems and methods that additionally project data to assist the surgical team.
2. Description of the Background of the Invention
Proper illumination of a surgical site is very important to a successful surgical outcome. As such, the operating room light is typically position to provide high quality lighting without shadows to the surgical site. Operating room lights are mounted so that they can be positioned to provide good line of sight lighting to the operating field. Because of the favored position of the operating room light, there have been proposals to incorporate other systems used during surgery that rely on or require good line of sight into or attached to the operating room light. For instance, U.S. Patent Publication No. 2003/0164953 discloses attaching a tracking camera system to an operating room light.
In addition, it is desirable to provide enhanced augmented reality data to a field of interest, preferably to a surgical field. The incorporation of augmented reality into a surgical operating room lighting system will enable the surgical team to concentrate on the surgical site without the need to look away to an external display device to monitor the patient's data, to review information, or to use surgical navigation systems. There have been proposals to project data onto a surgical site however none of these proposals suggest using light from the operating room or a similar light source to project the data onto the patient.